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I think all of us at CivicActions were disgusted by Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons’ vacation video featuring him murdering an elephant in Zimbabwe (and the subsequent butchering of that elephant by local villagers wearing Go Daddy hats overdubbed with the song Hells Bells ). Bob Parsons has exhibited some pretty questionable behavior before, and made distateful comments.
Last week I wrote about some research we conducted regarding Foundations and their use of Twitter . One thing I noticed in our research is that many Foundations are primarily using the Twitter website to interface with the service. In this post I will highlight a few tips for Foundations that want to make better use of Twitter, or improve their management of the social media tool.
Back in November 2010 we used the Glass Pockets database to identify 38 of the top 100 Foundations (by endowment site) using Twitter. By “using Twitter” we mean Foundations with official Twitter accounts. This does not include Foundation staff using Twitter, and we did not look at multiple Twitter accounts per Foundation, only the primary official Twitter account for each of the 38 Foundations. The Numbers We looked at some basic metrics for how these Foundations were using Twitter, such as the follower/following ratio, tweeting frequency, age of account, etc… There is tremendous variability in the data, which is not surprising. The numbers suggest that some Foundations have done little more than sign up for a Twitter account while others are making regular use of the service.
For the first time Ignite is coming to DrupalCon! We have a short slot on the Day Stage, Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 and will feature nine Ignite Talks. Ignite talks are strictly limited to five minutes, and twenty slides, that advance automatically every 15 seconds. In no particular order, the presenters will be:
Ignite is back for the third year running. We’ve scheduled Ignite talks for the first night of the 2011 NTC, so everyone who sees your talk will have a chance to catch you in the halls and ask you more about your presentation. Ignite is the purest dose you can get of the passions of NTC attendees. Ignite is a fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking social event that educates and entertains. The evening will be split into two sets, each under an hour. Refreshments will be served before, during, and after. Talks by (in no particular order):
In recent months we have been collaborating with a brilliant research scientist at the MIT Center For Future Civic Media (a client of ours from a few years back), Leo Burd.
I have always found CiviCRMs ACLs (Access Control Lists) system to be a bit of a mystery and a setting them up right to be a black art.
A few weeks ago, Sadie Honey and Elizabeth Raley — Certified SCRUM Masters, or Mistrixes? — presented an NTEN webinar on the topic of SCRUM and Project Management for Accidental Product Owners or Project Managers . The video of the webinar is available from NTEN via ReadyTalk , and the slide deck is available on SlideShare . View more presentations from sadiehoney .
On the heals of our recently released survey that looked at foundations and their websites , I spoke with one of our clients, John Theodore, a Technology Officer at the Annenberg Foundation , about their choice to go with Drupal for their website redesign. The Annenberg Foundation, founded in 1989, provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally. They have a number of web properties that serve different aims and programs. The Foundation decided to begin migrating their web properties from a variety of mostly proprietary or home-grown systems to Drupal in 2010. The work is ongoing and CivicActions is working with the Foundation on the project. Why Open Source? John admitted to something of a bias against proprietary systems based on the Foundation’s experiences as well as his own personal history as a developer and vendor. Proprietary systems often don’t communicate well with each other and thus become their own silos. Vendor and support options are also more limited for proprietary systems.
An interesting study came out last week reporting on congressional staffers’ attitudes towards Citizen Advocacy. For the report by The Partnership For A More Perfect Union , the organization surveyed 260 congressional staff on their opinions towards communication with constituents via both electronic and traditional mediums.